KMC Forums - flags of Our fathers

We were living in Oak Ridge, TN when "Flags of Our fathers" came out, and I bought the very first copy sold in town..They had to dig it out of the shipping box. I was blown away...When I was a boy, I remember hearing about Levi being "away in the Big War"...He later worked for my dad, in a plywood mill. I worked several summers for him, in the mill. He never talked about the war. All I knew was that he "fought the Japs"...When he returned, there were many nights that my dad would get a midnite Sat. nite phone call, and have to go down to the Shangri -La or the Wagon Wheel, and "rescue several guys from Levi." He STILL wanted to fight..He was STILL a Marine..In my youth, he was the big brother I never had, and and was like a son to my father. After I read the book, I wrote to Levi, by then retired, (he's 79, now) and asked him where he was in the Pacific. Soon a letter came, with a letter and a hand-drawn map of the beach, and Iwo Jima. Jesus. He'd hit that beach at age 18, got wounded the first day, sent back out to the troop ship, was patched up, and sent back in. He fought his way across the island, thru the Meat Grinder, and took the first air-base. He wrote. "I wasn't a hero. The heroes are all still over there, buried in that black sand."
I bought another copy of the book, to mail to Levi. In the meantime, I'd been e-mailing James Bradley back& forth, and asked him to please send Levi a note, that I could put in the book, and mail to him. I had it in a week. I cannot for the life of me recall what it said, but I do remember that I cried...That summer, 2000, I visited Levi. Suddenly, he opened up: "Jim...they killed a lot of my friends..." His voice was as cold as ice and as sharp as steel..."You know, I have an AR-16 rifle in the house, there...If I'd a' had it on Iwo, I'd a' killed this whole Goddamn front yard full of Japs..." The "yard" was the size of two football fields...
His dear & loyal wife, Lillian, had been siting there quietly; she got up, and went inside. In a minute, she came back out, and handed me a small, worn black box. Inside was the first Purple Heart I'd ever seen. She told me, "You're only the second person Levi's ever shown that to. The other person was your daddy."
JIM NICHOLS, Billings, MT